Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

You can hear him out the back barking like a rabid dog. So the metaphor of Labor Party management is Senator Doug Cameron. The Labor Party refuses to table the premier document on the revenue-raising capacity of this nation. The Labor Party refuses to engage in a proper, open and transparent debate about how we finance their massive debt. The Labor Party are hiding behind the fact that the finances of this nation are out of control. The Labor Party do not know how to finance $3.2 billion so you have no hope of financing your $120 billion of debt you have currently got. We heard Mr Swan, the Treasurer, last year talking about $315 billion peak debt. If you cannot manage $3.2 billion of debt how are you going to manage $315 billion? How are you going to do that?

Everything about the Labor Party is starting to mean we have absolutely no confidence in their deliveries and their projections. When it suits them or when they are scared of the truth they sit on the documents. These are the people who wanted transparency. These are the people who said they would be fiscally conservative. This is the management team that was going to deliver those outcomes. Before Christmas a document was handed to them yet they are still sitting on it. Did they give us a decisive answer? They love the rhetoric of ‘decisive’. I have a very simple question: when are you going to table the document? You know what you get? Like the answer to all of the economic questions: ‘Sometime in the future. Somewhere out there it will be tabled.’ That is just not good enough.

Senator Sherry and Mr Swan must do the right thing by the Australian people. They must be transparent and open. It is no good to say you are decisive when you are not. It is no good to say you are fiscally conservative when you are not. It is no good to say you are open and transparent when you are not. Unless you decide to table this document, that is the metaphor of your management. That is what the Australian people think.

You have no credibility, zero credibility, in any discussions about finances, budgets or the aspiration to reduce your massive debt because you do not even have the capacity to table a document that you have in your possession. The reason you do not table it is that you cannot make the numbers add up. The numbers just do not stack up. For the Australian people that is a massive concern, because as your debt marches ahead, getting bigger and bigger and bigger, you put pressure on all expenditure and on all aspects of budgetary appropriations into the future. You are doing that. This debt will start to manage our nation. You are not managing the debt; the debt is starting to manage our nation and you have brought that about. It is totally your responsibility. Unless we see the document, you have zero credibility, you are not transparent, you are not decisive and your economic management is a complete and utter farce.